Chapter 2
Tom
19 June. Beside a pond in a field near Cheltenham, England. Realm beyond the Sixth Circle.
Clouds rolled over the hillside and it began to rain. Two men stood in the wet grass unloading equipment from a van. One had white hair and was neatly dressed. His younger companion had light-brown hair and wore scruffy denims. Every few moments the older man glanced up the slope.
'There are people up there watching, Tom.'
'Relax, Colin.' Tom took a computer from the van. 'There are always people watching. It's the price you pay for being on TV. They know they can’t come through the gate. Stop worrying.’
Colin continued to fret.
'You know what I think about this whole crazy operation ...’
Tom connected the computer to a coaxial cable.
‘What do you think, Colin?’
‘It's totally illegal. I should never have agreed to it. There are strict protocols on experimentation with live animals. I have my reputation, as a surgeon, to think about. You should see the guidelines that Brussels puts out.'
‘Stop worrying … they’re just bureaucrats.’
Tom leaned into the van and removed a wicker basket.
‘We could be heavily fined, Tom.’
‘Or receive a Nobel Prize.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘If Galileo had worried about the law, he'd have been too scared to observe the moons of Jupiter and we'd still think the sun moved around the earth.'
'It's more complex than that, Tom. We could be accused of black magic. Think what that would do to our reputations.'
'I wasn't accused of black magic when I used divining rods.'
'No. You were labelled a crank.'
'Absolutely. When I use a magnetometer, I'm being scientific. When I use divining rods, I'm a crank.’ Tom leaned into the van and removed a wicker basket. ‘People won’t believe you unless you feed your observations into a computer and display them on a screen … and that’s what I’m going to do.’
He opened the basket and a cat peered out. The animal's head was shaven and electrical wires protruded from a teflon plate attached to its skull. He connected one end of the cable to the cat and the other to the computer.
‘People expect to see apparatus with wires sticking out. Well, they've got it now. Pussy's wired up and no one's going to accuse him of faking the results.'
Lights on the computer flashed and the animal purred.
'There you are,’ Tom grinned, ‘he’s enjoying it.'
‘The law doesn't care about that …’
Colin continued to fret but Tom wasn’t listening. He picked up the basket and carried it towards the pond, playing out the coaxial cable behind him. Colin glanced toward the gate and saw that the crowd of onlookers had been reduced to two. He guessed the others had retreated to their cars when it started to rain.
He returned his attention to Tom and the cat. Against his better judgment, he had agreed to implant electrodes in the animal’s brain. The pond had been sacred to the mother goddess in ancient times. Cats were her familiars. Her followers thought they could use them to communicate with her. That was why Tom had picked a cat for his crazy experiment.
Right now, the cat was sending signals down the cable to the computer. Points of light flashed around on the screen. Colin pulled a face. There was nothing surprising in that. The animal was probably thinking about his next meal or some female he planned to visit. He guessed he would get the same result if he implanted electrodes in Tom’s head and shut him in a basket.
Then, everything changed. The pleasure zones in the cat's brain stopped responding and others kicked in. A pattern of lines formed. Colin had seen them before. They were the same as those Tom had plotted with divining rods.